albums of the year - TL:DR (That's Long, DID Read)

Inevitably, the releases of the year, 2016 (grand finale!)

Before the release of the year, here are some honourable mentions (that are not necessarily less good than the ones I wrote about, but which I didn’t get round to writing about. There will also be omissions that I will probably mention later, when I remember them)

The honourable mentions…

Prophets of Rage – The Party’s Over

Jenny Hval – Blood Bitch

Iggy Pop – Post Pop Depression

De La Soul – …and the Anonymous Nobody…

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – The Skeleton Tree

Shield Patterns – Mirror Breathing

Trees of Eternity – Hour of the Nightingale

A Tribe Called Quest – We Got It From Here…Thank You 4 Your Service…

Kate Carr – I Had Myself a Nuclear Spring

Abbath – Abbath

Jeff Parker – The New Breed

Cate le Bon – Crab Day

Eno – The Ship

and finally – my choice for…

Release of the Year, 2016!

Kristin Hersh – Wyatt At The Coyote Palace (Omnibus Books)

I have written extensively about this album/book both here and for Echoes and Dust so will try not to repeat myself. 2016 was (externally, and I hope personally) a good year for Kristin Hersh. In addition to this long-awaited solo album, she released the excellent Bath White EP with her band 50FOOTWAVE and recently completed a successful solo tour, which I was lucky enough to catch one of the dates of (I wrote about it here). Wyatt… ended up being my album of the year because after months of listening I haven’t got anywhere near wearing it out. It’s a warm, intimate encounter with a fellow human being, a beautiful, mysterious, heartbreaking piece of work that ultimately feels strangely familiar. No other album this year has found a place in my heart in the same way this. It’s great.

Happy New Year & best wishes for 2017!

Inevitably, the releases of the year, 2016 (Part Three)

Some more highlights…

Lauren Redhead – Ijereja (Pan Y Rosas Discos)

Probably the least conventional release of the year on my list, I wrote about Lauren Redhead’s ambient/noise/found sound opera for Echoes and Dust, so will keep this short. An intriguing mix of music and non-music, it’s a minimalist but strangely satisfying work that repays close listening.

Suzanne Vega – Lover, Beloved: Songs from an Evening with Carson McCullers (Amanuensis Productions)

Taken from her stage show, this easily stands as an album; both soothing and thought-provoking, it’s a collection of clever, affecting and slightly jazzy songs arguably as good as any she has released.

Emma Ruth Rundle – Marked For Death (Sargent House)

Quite rightly appearing in many album of the year lists, Emma Ruth Rundle’s second album is a collection of dark and atmospheric ballads that is more affecting and more accessible than Some Heavy Ocean, but loses none of that record’s deep emotional impact.

Some metallic Releases of the Year

I’ve already mentioned some of the metal highlights of the year (Alcest, ThrOes, SubRosa) but it was a pretty good year for metal overall, so here are a few more great things:

Schammasch – Triangle (Prosthetic Records)

Unusual black metal, shrouded in mystery and atmosphere. A really good album that doesn’t sound much like anything else; quite an accomplishment given the genre.

Ihsahn – Arktis. (Candlelight Records)

Far more conventional than Das Seelenbrechen (with the Hardingrock album Grimen, still my favourite Ihsahn release) but much more fun too – an inventive, exciting album that is both modern and classic.

Hobbs’ Angel of Death – Heaven Bled (Hell’s Headbangers)

A classic thrash comeback from one of the great overlooked bands of the 80s. Only nostalgia makes their self-titled debut the better album.

Bethlehem – Bethlehem (Prophecy Productions)

After years of experimental, conceptual work, Bethlehem returned with perhaps their best and certainly their most straightforward album to date, aided hugely by new vocalist Onielar. A dark metal masterpiece.

Mithras – On Strange Loops (Willowtip Records)

Mithras mark the end of an era with their strongest album to date; progressive, forward-looking death metal that is as powerful as it is inventive.

Madder Mortem – Red In Tooth And Claw (Dark Essence Records)

An excellent comeback from Norway’s Madder Mortem; catchy, unorthodox songs and great performances, especially from singer Agnete M. Kirkvaage.

Also…

Drudkh/Hades Almighty – The One Who Talks With The Fog/Pyre Era, Black! (Season of Mist) – The best of Drudkh’s recent split releases, not least because Hades Almighty are on equally formidable form.

Forteresse – Thèmes Pour la Rébellion (Sepulchral Productions) – I’ve written about my love of Métal Noir Québécois at length here qnd, even though I prefer Forteresse’s earlier, more atmospheric work, this album is a vital, furious addition to their work

Opeth – Sorceress (Nuclear Blast) – Perhaps the best non-death metal album Opeth have released

Inquisition – Bloodshed Across the Empyrean Altar Beyond the Celestial Zenith (Season of Mist) – Inquisition are perhaps beginning to tread water with their seventh album, but they are working at such a high standard that this is still essential for black metal fans

Sad Farewells of the Year

Celebrity deaths have been especially noticeable this year, but both David Bowie and Leonard Cohen managed to say goodbye with albums that are excellent even by their very high standards. These albums acknowledge their finality in a way that rarely happens in popular music (or any art, really). So moving (if you’re a fan) that they are hard to evaluate.

David Bowie – Blackstar (ISO/RCA)

A difficult listen, it’s a measure of Blackstar‘s quality that it is still revealing its secrets months after its release and it remains difficult to evaluate just where it belongs qualitatively in Bowie’s vast and rich catalogue. Philosophical and in some ways opaque, it shows an artist at the end of his life looking inwards and outwards but rarely backwards; a brave, forbidding but ultimately enriching album that sounds like nothing else on earth (or anywhere else).

Leonard Cohen – You Want It Darker (Columbia)

In many ways not that unusual for a Leonard Cohen album, You Want It Darker is witty, wise and deeply sad. Not as painful to listen to as Blackstar, but just as emotionally involving.

Final part to follow, including my release of the year!

Releases of the Year 2016! Preliminary note…

2016 – oh well; at least there was lots of good music released this year (and it’s still coming!)

As usual, I probably won’t put my favourite releases of the year in any order (apart from the number one ‘release of the year’ itself. I know album or record of the year sounds better, but there are non-albums too, so ‘releases’ it is).

Last year, I made a parallel list of ‘most listened to’ albums that weren’t from that year. But that was a total pain, so probably not this time.

So, in short, who knows how many parts this will be in, or what it will include? Not me, yet. But soon!

Weekly Wafflings

For a variety of reasons, it’s been far longer than intended since I last posted anything here. So this is now the first of my weekly updates, which will mostly, I hope, be posted every Friday.

It’s been a funny summer; a house move, a lot of nice weather interspersed with a lot of rain, and (ongoing) the most unsettling national/international situation I can remember living through, which has involved are-evaluation of what I believe in politically and so forth – but I have a bigger summer review type thing in the pipeline at some point, so this is just a quick note until I have something more substantial to post. Onwards!

Current listening

I’ve heard a lot of good music recently, both old & new; in regular rotation have been: Egor Grushin’s beautiful Once and Domenicano, Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention’s Burnt Weenie Sandwich and Uncle Meat, The Beau Brummels (who are never quite as good as I want them to be – ie not as good as The Lovin’ Spoonful) but have some really good songs, Kenny Drew & Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen’s Duo, Bessie Smith, a really interesting album called Stations by i am rhino and ruin which I’ll write about in more detail at some point, the wonderful Annette Hanshaw, John Baizley, Nate Hall & Mike Scheidt’s Songs of Townes Van Zandt, Louis Prima & Keely Smith, Maki Asakawa, Myriam Gendron’s Not So Deep As A Well, Japanese Breakfast, Alcest’s Kodama, Nick Jonah Davis’ House of Dragons, The Pastels, everything I could find by the brilliant Stupid Daikini, the new Wardruna album, Yurei’s Night Vision, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ Skeleton Tree, Madder Mortem’s Red In Tooth And Claw (which reminds me in some ways of the amazing Jingo de Lunch album Perpetuum Mobile) and Rachel Mason’s forthcoming and very addictive Das Ram, among other things, which brings me to…

Albums of the Year

I haven’t started making an actual list yet, but it’s that time of year when some albums have firmly earned their place in the AOTY list and others are looking likely. It would be nice if Prophets of Rage released an album, but oh well. I’ve no idea how long the list will be, but I can say at this point that it will certainly include Bowie’s Blackstar, Iggy Pop/Tarwater/Alva Noto’s Leaves of Grass (not really an album but I’ll make an exception), Darkher’s Realms, Emma Ruth Rundle’s Marked For Death and Kristin Hersh’s amazing new book/double album Wyatt at the Coyote Palace.

*coincidence of the week!*

there are currently two lovely & sad (though otherwise not alike) songs called ‘Guadalupe’ regularly visiting my ears; one by the aforementioned Kristin Hersh and the other by Esmé Patterson.

Current Reading

I read Gail Carriger’s The Custard Protocol books way too fast and then spent the summer reading other things, notably Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood which was just as gripping and vivid and horrible as I remembered and Michael Moorcock’s two Corum trilogies (now on the last volume) which have been surprisingly comforting, not just because they are old favourites, but because of the rational but not backwards-looking philosophy that underlies Moorcock’s writing, even when the books are at their most typically ‘heroic fantasy’/swords and sorcery in their stories and action:

“Do you know that you dream of these gods – that you are stronger than they – that when you are fearful, why then you bring fearsome gods upon yourselves? Is this not evident to you?”

“Everything may exist for a short while – even justice. But the true state of the universe is anarchy. It is the mortal’s tragedy that he can never accept this.”

Other forms of entertainment

Grim times call for light entertainment (sometimes anyway); and I have watched and enjoyed an inordinate amount of Columbo and M*A*S*H in recent weeks/months; which suggests that war and murder are more soothing than one might expect. Less ephemerally, I have been looking at lots of art, mainly online inevitably, and am especially liking Awol Erizku at present for his re-framing & questioning of art history. So here’s his lovely Girl With A Bamboo Earring:

Until next week…

Inevitably, the releases of the year 2015 (part three)

Onwards with more of the best new releases of 2015, as usual in no order, but with the first mentioned especially worthy of earspace…

Oblivionized – Life Is A Struggle, Give Up (Secret Law Records)

Oblivionized spent the years 2008 – 2013 or so building a style that was dense, technical, experimental and explosive and roughly in the borderlands between technical death metal and grindcore, a period perhaps best experienced on 2011’s Abhorrent Evolution EP. Thereafter, the band reconfigured to a three piece and stripped their music to its unpredictable, emotionally volatile core. Life Is A Struggle… is the perfect encapsulation of the style they arrived at and is a perfect distillation of some of the more vital aspects of the UK extreme [enter preferred genre name here] underground.

Ratatat – Magnifique (XL Recordings)

Ratatat’s peculiar ‘rocktronica’ is as distinctive as ever on this, their fifth album. I haven’t heard all of their work, but based on the bits I know, this seems ‘typical’, in that it is strangely soothing even when woozily off key or actually sort of instrumental-version-of-Queen-ish.

Nechwochen – Heart of Akamon (Nordvis Produktion)

2015 was a good year for folk and/or ‘heritage’ influenced American black metal and while Obsequiae (rightly) got most of the plaudits for the extraordinary Aria of Vernal Tombs (which will feature in this end-of-year-roundup at some point), Nechochwen’s Heart of Akamon is a superbly atmospheric album which has its roots in the history and culture of north America – still surprisingly rare in USBM compared to the influence of essentially European themes.

Alif – Aynama-Rtama (Nawa Recordings)

I hate to use a term as meaningless as ‘world music’ but I don’t know enough about Arabic music (or want to, really) to say anything very intelligent about this beautiful and (to my ears) unusually-textured music.

Chris Cornell – Higher Truth (Universal Music)

Despite my affection for Soundgarden, I was quite surprised to find how much I enjoyed this album; compared to recent Chris Cornell albums, it’s simple, straightforward, not boring and heartfelt. Plus his voice is still great.

OLD ALBUM OF THE YEAR: contender# 3

Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers – Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers (Berserkley Records, 1976)

Genuinely timeless in its strange mixture of sparse instrumentation (acoustic guitar/bass/drums), harmony vocals and childishly straightforward songwriting; a great album

Inevitably, the releases of the year, 2015 (part one)

I don’t know yet how many releases of the year I have, so I am just going to do them in sets of five (or thereabouts) over a few days. I don’t think I have an overall ‘album of the year’ for 2015 so instead I’ll just cover one – the first one – in more depth than the others each time.

IN FACT, this is all a bit artificial, in the sense that these are the NEW albums of the year & therefore not necessarily what I spent the most ‘quality time’ listening to; so there will be one of those each time too… ONWARDS!

Jarboe and Helen Money – Jarboe and Helen Money (Aurora Borealis Recordings)

One of the musical highlights of 2015 came early in the year; nothing about this release is ordinary. Less than an album but more than an EP, its six tracks pack a massive emotional and musical impact. Jarboe and Helen Money are in, in some ways similar figures; Jarboe the visionary, expressionist vocalist/musician/artist of Swans and (the criminally underrated) World of Skin and avant-garde cellist Helen Money. Piano, cello and vocals may not seem like the most varied palette, but Helen Money explores the possibilities of her instrument here in a way that is rare in any kind of music. The cello doesn’t stand in for other instruments in an imitative way, but is percussion, rhythm and lead and it’s a testament to both players that the record always feels like a genuine two-way collaboration between Jarboe’s voice; alternately fragile and indomitable and Money’s cello and never as simple as vocalist and backing music.

Zombi – The Zombi Anthology (Relapse Records)

As the title suggests, the music contained on this album isn’t from 2015, but this album was released this year, and it’s my choice, so it counts. And Zombi’s music from 2001-2003 is a masterclass in creepy minimalist electronica in the John Carpenter mould, so there’s that too.

Ghost Bath – Moonlover (Northern Silence Productions)

Somewhat overshadowed by the strange controversy of where Ghost Bath are from, the fact of the matter is that Moonlover is an excellent addition to an ever-growing pool of music that’s too ‘nice’ for diehard BM fans but too nasty for your average non-metal alt-rock/shoegaze listener. It’s definitely become some kind of genre, but there’s room for originality within it and this has very good songs without being too typical.

Odessey & Oracle – Odessey and oracle and the Casiotone Orchestra (Folkwit Records)

French baroque pop with twee tendencies, this is a warm, rich and harmonious album full of great tunes, wistful electronica, folk textures and something that should probably be called ‘winsome Gallic charm’. The twee-est bits are perhaps overly sweet, but overall it’s an accomplished and hugely likeable piece of work.

De Profundis – Kingdom of the Blind (Wickerman Recordings)

Undoubtedly one of the metal releases of the year. De Profundis have never made a bad record, but each has improved on the last, with Kingdom of the Blind now standing atop a formidable body of work. So perfectly balanced and masterfully written that its heaviness is easily overlooked, this is a metal album to cross all genre boundaries.

OLD ALBUM OF THE YEAR: contender #1

David Bowie – Station To Station

2015 was the year that Diamond Dogs was replaced by Young Americans as my favourite Bowie album; but in the last few months the sinister, numb-yet-romantic, occult-yet-technological Station To Station has been gaining ear-space. A uniquely strange mixture that absolutely works.